Sunday, February 25, 2007

This year for Valentine's Day, I felt compelled to bring something other than cupcakes to my daughter's preschool party. Most school parties call for cake and snack-lets and the like. But for once, I just wanted to think outside the box. Okay, that and also the fact that I don't bake. I craft. But I do not bake, folks. It's a fact.

So online I go, and find this little recipe. Thanks to Family Fun.com, I was able to make (bake!) Crayon Hearts. The recipe was easy. And believe me when I tell you that coming from me, that says a LOT. A toddler could do this. But shouldn't of course, because it involves the oven. A toddler, could however help you peel and brake up the crayons needed for this. Or if you're like me, you could torture a poor guest visiting for the night. Keep her up past midnight with sore fingers until you realize that you could use an exact-o knife to cut right down the crayon to free it from it's silly wrapper.

But I digress. The final product is adorable, and loads of fun to use. And a much better alternative to sweets.

Oh, and also, I found that throwing this in my bag for long car trips was better than bringing along a whole box of crayons. Which end up melted on the floor and between the seats anyway! How pretty! By the third batch, I realized the more vibrant colors should be used first in the pan. Colors like white, tan and grey should only be used in the middle for show.

For the goodie bags, I found a bundle of small heart themed bags. The crayons (shown below) were put in, along with a mini play dough, a Valentine printed off the Internet (signed by my daughter) and a word search we made with all the classmates' names in it!

We hoped at least one creative classmate would use the heart crayon for the word search and the valentine!

I fastened the bag with heart lollipops and with scrapbook stickers (thanks to Mel) each classmate's name was written in the center. (see below)

Pictured below was my daughter's gift to ME. A Valentine sun catcher. I love it and plan on using it for many Valentine's to come!

I love ATCs, and used to make them all the time. But lately I've been in a creative slump. My ATC creation has been suffering due to this slump, so I thought perhaps if I tried something new, I could regain a new perspective to look at ATCs from.

And I think it worked. I really enjoyed making these! These 8 are the first I made. I have about 20 more of these squares to alter/play with, along with about 30 greenish blue squares as well.

The background color is pink Lumiere paint (which I just bought and LOVE), stamped with the edge of a black ink pad. Some don't have any black ink on them at all, which is the beauty of the randomness.

I used rub-ons for the second row (the diamonds), some paper flowers, rubber alphabet stamps, photo corners, and silver glitter. I tried to get punny - "story of the silver sea" next to the letter C. and also "another letter" next to A. Yeah...it is lacking without images to go with it I think. I'm working on scouring the net and my mags for some great (but tiny) images to add to these. So difficult!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

At the request of my busy blogging partner-in-art, I'm posting a picture of a piece I created in November (was it November, Sha?) for Sharon, featuring Sharon.

This is Sharon's beautiful face inside a shrine to beauty. I wanted to create something for her birthday that would remind her how lovely I find her, especially in light of the fact that I will be moving out of state this summer.

I used mostly bookprint to cover the box (a discarded Gerber zwieback toast box). After letting the glue dry (mod podge) I rubbed the sides with multiple colored chalk ink pigments. All the colorful paper, the piece that says "Paris", the green part, the flowers, were scanned from a copy of Somerset Studio. The "S" I actually got here. The alphabet set was originally black and gray, but a little photoshopping fixed that right up. I fixed Sharon's image inside the box with glue and cardboard stands, added faux printed curtains, then sealed the box top. I added the "S", a piece of curled bookprint that I hand wrote "hello, beautiful" on, and hand trimmed focal points with gold leaf pen.

Voila!

It looks quite small compared to my books, but I think the size worked perfectly. Sharon's mobile shrine has lived in many places in her home. First in her daughter's room, then in her bedroom, and now I believe it's in her office/spare room. Yay! She liked it!

Monday, February 12, 2007

This is Inconsistent Art, a blog co-owned and authored by Nichole and Sharon, of "E and Me" and "It's Okay, Sweetie."

Sharon and I realized that our blogs, though general in nature, tended to lean toward the baby side of life. Sharon blogs almost exclusively about her daughter, and I blog almost exclusively about mine. We decided that we each wanted an outlet for our creativity alone, and since we both wanted the same thing, we decided to save some space in the blogosphere to make one joint crafty effort to get our art out there.

So this is a short hello and welcome for now. I'm in the process of trying to fine tune the blog's appearance, and hope that Sharon and myself will be blogging soon and frequently!

What is 'Made with Love?'

What do we consider to be made with love? Our children, our artwork, our friendship and so much more. We are four fabulous women who started scrapbooking together at our local scrapbooking store. Some of us knew each other going into it, some of us met through other scrapbookers and friends. When one of us moved out of state we took it upon ourselves to create this little blog as a way to bond over the distances. We share our lives here, and strengthen our bonds.